


Reverdie

by mimiofthemalfoys



Series: Jonsa Spring Blossoms [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Alcoholic Coma, F/M, Flowers, Fluff and Angst, Freeform, Language of Flowers, Light Angst, Pre asoiaf - Freeform, also this isn't too romantic cause most of the time they are preteens, fetus!jonsa, follows jon and sansa from their childhood to post s8, jonsa, take a shot everytime i mention a flower variety, well not technically au but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-14 20:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18059564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimiofthemalfoys/pseuds/mimiofthemalfoys
Summary: "I’ll build you a garden, the biggest and loveliest of them all."amazing, what a crown of hawthorn flowers can do.





	Reverdie

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1: Prompt- Flowers  
> title inspired from the old french poems which celebrated the coming of spring. seemed fit.

**_“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...”_ **

**― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, _The Little Prince_**

A memory:

When Sansa is all of six name-days old, a strange malady of sorts afflicts the North. First there comes a bloody flush, then a fever which no poultice can cure, then shaking, delirium, cold sweats. Rabbit-farmers, inn-keepers, little children…. no one is spared as the disease makes its ways through the streets and villages and taverns of Winterfell. At home, her Lady Mother burns incense in the Sept and prays for the health and safety of the Northmen. Her father rides out into the town before they’ve even broken their fasts, to keep his duty to his people, to render money and medicine and food to the impoverished and keep vigil with families of victims. Sansa fears for him, and she knows her mother does too, for the sickness spreads by touch. Sometimes, as she passes the courtyard, she hears the servants speak of such ominous things _\- stable-master Hullen’s son has been unconscious for five days already, Lew the cook has lost her husband_. Death and corruption clings to everything like a mad lover.

At night too, when she and her siblings gather round the fire, this is all they get to hear about. Old Nan, always exulting at the horrific, likens it to a milder variety of the winter fever which had gripped the Realm during the Dance of the Dragons. “Your flesh will thin, and fall off the bone like a tender piece of lamb,” she says, voice dripping in glee. “And you’ll swell like the puff-fish of the Southern Isles till you stop breathing.” Bran begins to cry, and the session is called off.

Later, in bed, Arya asks her, “What if the fever takes Old Nan? She doesn’t have flesh anyway.”

Sansa almost laughs- then checks herself, for that would be most unladylike. “Old Nan has seen worse,” she says. “A mere flux wouldn’t take her. Now, go to sleep.”

Her little sister pulls a face and turns the other way.

And when the morning comes, it is Sansa who ends up getting sick.

* * *

 “Go play with your brother in the courtyard. And keep away from Lady Stark. She is not feeling too amused these days.”

 _Why’d I want to visit Lady Stark, anyway_?- Jon thinks glumly. _She has no love for me_. Nevertheless, he knows better than to voice his thoughts aloud to Maester Luwin and instead heads for the godswood. Robb and Arya are chasing each other through the stables, but today Jon doesn’t feel like joining them, which is very unlike him. Maybe it’s just another one of those days when he prefers the solace of his own company. Or, maybe it’s the gloom pervading outside (Jon has heard the ostlers mourning poor Hullen’s boy) which has seeped into the Lord and Lady Stark, as they helplessly watch their folk suffer. And now, to add to their misery, their own daughter is laid down with fever.

Sansa. Only six, but she is a proper little princess already, Lady Stark’s daughter to the bone, half-Tully in essence, with none of the wild, feckless zeal that marks Robb and Arya. Sansa of the big blue eyes and songbird voice, who likes surrounding herself with pretty things and soft sounds and a rose-gold mist of whimsy no one can break through. She doesn’t get along with him, her airs and graces put him off; his perpetual sulking displeases her. They are too polite to argue but he knows, he just _knows_ -when they exchange glances sometimes, at the Great Hall, or perhaps when they go on berry trails together- that she loves to make him aware of where he stands in the scheme of things. _Bastard_.

Jon circles the hawthorn grove, again and again. At this time of the year, the trees are heavy with clusters of bright pink or pearl-coloured blossoms. The sky is a peerless blue. It’s a beautiful day; a _waste,_ he thinks, a waste of beauty in rot and ailment. The great stone castle looms before him, frost lining the eaves of the east wing, where he knows Sansa is kept in isolation. Well, save for the healers and her mother. Lady Stark is always present at her side. Even so, a sudden rush of sympathy sweeps through Jon for his sister. He knows he’d hate to be cooped up inside on a day like this, swallowing herb infusions and perspiring beneath a hundred furs. No one to play with, no one to make her laugh. Pity.

Breeze ruffles the branches above his head and the flowers sway languidly. An idea takes shape.

* * *

 When Sansa wakes, the first thing she sees is colour. A woven crown of ruddy pink hawthorn blooms, with bright yellow hearts, sits on her bedside table, tied together with some twine and coiled rope.

“That’s from your half-brother,” says her mother, who sits at the foot of her sick bed. Sansa notices the thin set of her mouth, the hardness in her stare. “He had Maester Luwin bring that in for you. A recovery gift, if you will.”

Jon Snow? He has never cared for her too much. Then again, she hasn’t made things easy for him. Of her true siblings, Sansa is the only one who doesn’t acknowledge Jon as one of their own. Arya adores him, Robb seeks him out for all their games, even Bran, a wee babe of three, gets a light of worship in his eyes every time they share the same breathing space.

Sansa hates that he is so loved. But more than that, she hates the fact that she cannot bring herself to love him like they do. She cannot think of him as her own flesh-and-blood, the way she thinks of the rest of them. And it bothers her. It bothers her immensely.

Still, his gesture of goodwill thaws some of the ice in her heart. She has never been one to let chivalry go unappreciated (what else would one call his risking Catelyn Stark’s wrath to bring Sansa flowers?) and she is musing on how best to thank him when her mother says, “I’ll have the Maester tell him you’ve accepted the gift.”

Sansa nods. “It was so very sweet of him to make this,” she adds with some fire, “especially since I’ve not had _a word_ from Robb or Arya since I fell sick.”

It stings. “Yes, I suppose it is sweet,” her mother says tersely. “He could’ve picked something more becoming, though, for a noble lady’s crown, something pretty.”

Sansa sinks back into her pillows. She reaches out to lightly brush her hand against the wreath. She wouldn’t dare admit it for the world, but to her hazy, fever-dreaming eyes, nothing has ever looked prettier.

* * *

For the next couple of weeks, Sansa has the Maester bring in small bowls of water to keep the flowers fresh. And when they die, she needn’t worry, for there are others to follow: mountain orchid clusters in flame hues, bluebells, even winter roses from the glass gardens. “Is this some sort of penance?” the Maester asks. She shrugs, burrowing her nose into whatever bouquet has been sent up to her room for the week.

Spring breaks through the frozen ground. And with it, the pestilence that had burrowed itself into Winterfell’s very heart finally takes its leave, a sinister stranger who departs as quietly as he’d arrived. Noblemen, vassals, stewards and commonfolk let out a collective sigh of relief. The kingdom heals, bit by bit.

Ned Stark has never been a religious man, but all the same he gathers his children into the godswood and makes them pay respect to the Old Gods. While the others pray, Jon’s gaze sweeps across the glass gardens, now bursting to the seams with colour and fragrance.

_Hothouse roses in flame-red hair. Forget-me-nots to go with blue eyes._

Up in her lonely tower, Sansa heals too. Slowly. Spring is everywhere. It is in the slice of sun that falls upon her bed, the birdsong from the open casement. It is in her smile, and the small wreath of dried blooms she wears in her hair. Everywhere.

* * *

 Something to think about:

_Stable-yard fights. Wooden swords hitting at elbows and knees. Arya’s tiny braid tied up to keep the hair away as she furiously swats at Theon with a tiny makeshift lance._

Jon, you be Duncan and I’ll be Aemon _, Robb says. They square off against each other inside an empty barn. Bales of hay sit in the sun, waiting to cushion any fall._ No, I’m always Duncan, _Jon bargains._ Let me be Aemon for a change _. They go on like this, back-and-forth, until Arya intervenes._ Fight it out like proper knights and the winner shall be Aemon. _And so they do._

 _True knights have gangly legs and scrawny bodies. Arya watches them spar. She bets on Robb, with his strength and skill. And he wins._ Fine then, I’ll be Duncan _, Jon huffs, too annoyed to argue._ Aemon was horseshit anyway, fathering a bastard like that _. His brother and sister chortle in unison._

_The sun is high up in the sky when they end their play. Jon smells of dirt and sweat and he’d rather die than walk back inside like this, where he is sure to be spotted by one of the masters, or even worse, Lady Stark herself._

_A little away from the castle, there is a brook that wends its way through the deeper woods, upto the crystal caves. It’s a favourite haunt of his, and it’s where he goes now, hoping to nurse his wounded pride by solitude._

_But as it were, the old gods of the forest are having their little joke today. When he reaches the spot, he finds it overrun by young girls, all pretty and highborn and twittering like birds, enacting some sort of make-believe amongst themselves. They are standing in a large ring, clapping their hands and singing a ballad. He tries to edge past them but a coppery flash catches his eye and that’s when he sees her._

_Sansa is at the centre of the ring, the hem of her simple white dress fluttering round her ankles. Her bright red-auburn hair flows down her shoulderblades, adorned with wildflowers of every species and colour in the book. She sways to the rhythm of the song and there is an unearthly music to her movements. Jon watches from afar. That is until, Jeyne Poole, who stands at the other side of the ring, sees him and lets out a yelp. (Like a horse, he thinks. Or a man in a bog.) “_ Jon Snow! What are you doing here _?”_

 _The girls freeze, all of them turning to him, more fearsome than a pack of direwolves. Sansa turns to face him, but the stars haven’t died in her eyes yet._ Hello, Jon _, she says coolly, tugging at her skirt for modesty. The gesture makes his face burn._

Hello, I was just passing. I’ll leave now, _he blubbers. Jeyne narrows her eyes at him. He hopes he isn’t foraying into untoward territory when he musters all his courage and says,_ You look very nice, Sansa. The flowers suit you _._

 _Some of the girls giggle._ Nice _. Jon decides today is not his day._ Robb will be laughing himself hoarse.

 _But then Sansa smiles and she says demurely,_ Thank you. I was playing Jenny.

_Jenny? Oh, Jenny. Of course. Jenny of Oldstones. Strange, lovely, lonely Jenny who wore flowers in her hair, the subject of a hundred Westerosi songs._

_High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts..._

_Prince Duncan’s lover Jenny, whom he chose over the crown, even as it brought war._

_Jon feels like a hedgehog caught in a snare, never in his life as he ever felt so helpless. He looks at Sansa, her petite form, the sapphire blue eyes, the naturally red lips, the soft flush of heat on her creamy skin. She’s always been pretty, but for the first time, Jon thinks his half-sister might be, well, beautiful._ Jenny. I see. Nice _. (hadn’t he said nice already?)_ Alright. Very well.

 _He leaves, without gauging her reaction, without stopping to suffer for the merry delight of the girls, who have found enough gossip in this little exchange to last them a month._ Sansa might be Jenny alright _, he thinks,_ but I’m neither Duncan, nor Aemon. I’m a fool and a bastard one at that, the worst fool of them all.

* * *

_A lot can happen in two years._

In the bluish haze of evening, Jon and Arya gather wildflowers by the lake. He finds a patch of violets. His sister picks the fallen ones and scoops them into her skirt, her own stash.

“Save some for Sansa,” he tells her gently.

 “Sansa doesn’t like these anymore. And she doesn’t like to put on flowers anyway, not since Septa Mordane bought her those stupid jewelled combs from Fairmarket. I’m going to put these by my bed, and the primroses I’ll give to Father.”

Jon fondly listens to her prattle, yet he does not forget to bring some flowers to Sansa. It is late and she is getting ready for supper, done up prettily in blue-and-white. She doesn’t look too pleased to see him. “Brought you some white roses from the garden. You used to like the little ones.”

She accepts them gracefully enough, but remarks, “I like red roses now.” And then she leaves, in a swish of skirts.

It’s the last time in years he and Sansa shall get to converse alone, but Jon is unaware of that. He thinks of the day by the brook, the singing girls with the forest in their hair. Then, he can’t help but feel a wave of regret wash over him, regret for what growing does to people, regret at the unfounded joy that had led to nowhere, but mostly, mostly regret that flower-nymph Jenny had to die so Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell could be born.

* * *

 There are red roses galore the day Sansa’s betrothal to the Prince is announced. They festoon the tables, the pillars and every single piece of furniture in the Great Hall. It’s a Lannister hue, and it goes well with the garb Joffrey Baratheon, ( _crown prince of the Seven Kingdoms, who cannot slice a blood-orange properly without dripping juice all over his fancy robes_ ) alright, with his blonde hair and flashing green eyes. Sansa wears them too, a cluster in her hair and a sash of them around her waist. It doesn’t suit her at all, that dark blood-red, like the skin of a pomegranate. But she looks ecstatic, glowing with joy, with excitement, and Jon can forgive the terrible colour scheme for the sake of her happiness.

 _A beauty like Sansa shouldn’t stay holed up in the North forever_. This is what the queen had said to Lady Stark, (one of the cooks serving at the table had overheard them, and soon it was common news in the outer circles) and Jon supposes he should agree with the opinion of Cersei Lannister. But when he looks at her from his place among the outcasts of Winterfell, seated amongst her friends at a special table, the jewel of the evening, no doubt, he knows he is separated from her at once by inches and miles.

He wonders if there are hawthorn trees in King’s Landing.

* * *

  _Dark red too is Ned Stark’s blood when his lifeless body slumps before the Great Sept of Baelor. It is the colour of Tywin Lannister’s retinues, as they storm the Riverlands, pillaging and looting and raping. It is the thin line that runs from one end of Catelyn Tully’s throat to the other, the dark stain growing bigger in her eldest son’s chest while Walder Frey drinks deep from his cup._

_Dark red: the streaks on Sansa’s back, after Boros Blount-and the rest of the fair knights in the Kingsguard-are done with her.  It is the colour of the drops that fall upon fresh snow as Olly twists his knife into Jon’s gut, for the Watch._

_But that’s for later._

* * *

  _Then, an interlude:_

There is a godswood in the Eyrie which Sansa ( _Alayne, she reminds herself. You’re Alayn_ e) likes quite a bit. It faces the valley, and is always cold and quiet in the mornings. In the stench and din of the capital city, there was not a moment Sansa could have to herself. But here, in this castle flanked by great mountains, she feels closer to her home than she has in months.

Home, or what’s left of it.

She has a hymn book that she carries with her everywhere she goes. In its pages she presses flowers that she likes, their shapes and colours preserved between prayers to the Mother, to the Maiden and the Crone. Most of them grew in Winterfell too, flora of cold altitudes. Carrying the book around underneath her cloak, she feels as if she takes a bit of her childhood with her wherever she goes. Yet it’s all pretend, because nothing of  Winterfell remains now.

Then one night, when she heads down to the godswood she is startled to find the place in full bloom. Slender branches of trees glisten. A beautiful place, magical in the starlight. The air is heavy with the smell of pine. Somewhere, a wolf howls.

A name rises to her lips. Of another lonely wolf, lost somewhere in the snows of the far North. _Does he remember? And if he does, will he still care? Who can tell?_

Tomorrow, she’ll fill more pages of her book with dreams of spring.

* * *

 In fact, the next time they meet, it’s in winter.

For later: _what happened to you? What did they do? What happened to our home?_

For later: _I’ll build you a garden, the biggest and loveliest of them all._

For now: pain. And the chill from tears that have dried on skin like crystals. And the taste of loss.

Very cold, the two of them. Ice in their hearts.

* * *

 Winterfell stands on a mountain of bones. The air reeks.

Same courtyard. Same bales of hay. Same sun. But ghosts of little things flit about the old barn. Broken arrows. A shield, lying face downwards, caked with dried blood. At the back, where the horses are kept, a rolled up cluster of red and pink flags.

“There used to be a flower-patch in here,” Sansa says. She stands with Jon at the edge of the glass gardens, ankle-deep in new snow. “I remember. Mother had fashioned it after Grandmother Minisa’s arbour in Riverrun. Pinks and blues and vines and trellises. More blooms from the flood plains than the hills. Father warned they’d not be able to stand the Northern winters. But she went ahead and planted them anyway.”

“When the cold left and we came down in here to check on the saplings-would you believe it? Everything was a riot of colour. It was like the yard of some witchling’s cottage in a fairytale. Somehow, the winter couldn’t kill my mother’s garden. Father said it was a miracle. But Mother replied, _What’s so miraculous about it, Ned? New life shall find all who endure._ ”

Jon stands in silence, watching the snow cover everything Catelyn had once loved. Deferred regard for his stepmother mixes in with something indescribable. “When all this ends, Sansa,” he finds himself saying, “I’ll-”

She cuts into his words. “If all this ends.”

“When.”

“ _If_ ,” she insists.

“Very well. If,” he shakes his head in mock reproach. “If all this ends, Sansa, I’ll build you a garden, the biggest and loveliest of them all. _”_

Her smile softens. She brushes her hand lightly against his arm, the gentlest touch he’s felt in days, and leaves his side.

Once again, he’s alone.

* * *

  _After._

_What of after? The battle on the catchments? The dragon queen’s army? Creatures made of ice? The twin surges of flame- red and bright emerald?_

_After they’d realised he was not one of them? Or even after, when they realised he was?_

_No. After is:_

“You aren’t allowed to open your eyes till I say so.”

“Jon, this is childish foolery.”

“Call it whatever you like. No, don’t try to pry Arya’s hands away.”

Behind her, her sister snorts into her hair.

 _Fifteen steps. Twenty. Turn._ Sansa hopes they are not going to lead her straight into the brook. She wouldn’t put it past them. Finally, after prolonged debating (all in whispers), Jon and Arya say in near-unison, “Open your eyes.”

She does.

It starts from the south end of the Godswood, the blossoms. Bleeding hearts and roses and strange flowers from the Summer Isles…and are those _blue lilies from Lhys_?! The weirwoods are flame-red, bowed down by their white boughs. Juniper trees and silver fir, primroses in fat bunches, easing their way out of fissures in old mountain-rock. The garden shimmers and shifts in light and shadows, blazing in the tint of a thousand flowers. Here and there a marble bench, a small stone fountain, a birdbath of quartz.

It’s more beautiful than anything from her childhood, from the royal gardens in King’s Landing, from her dreams of Highgarden.

Jon, standing slightly apart, is as quiet as she is, so it’s Arya as always who puts in, “Do you like it?”

Sansa is aware she is faintly nodding, as she kneels to the ground, as she puts her face to the flowers, so close that the delicate scents seem almost overpowering. “This is all I’ve wished for.”

“We know,” Arya says smugly. Jon is still silent. His eyes eagerly scan her face. “Do you remember-?” he begins to say.

 But Sansa rises and embraces her sister instead, because it is the easier thing to do, because there has never been any doubt in her mind of who she was to her, because the look, the _look_ in Jon’s eyes is making her unsteady, feel things she is still not prepared to feel.

* * *

 “ _How long till I can move again?”_

_Maester Luwin smiles and places a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “In about a few days. Five, at the most. You’ll be dancing and singing again in no time.”_

_Her mother lets out an enormous sigh of relief. She touches Sansa’s knee, who smiles wanly back at her._

_It’s so lovely outside_.

_“Just one more thing,” she says._

_The Maester turns towards her._

_“Thank him,” she says. “Tell him I loved his gift.”_

* * *

 She presses her face to her sister’s shoulder and looks at Jon, at his soft grey eyes. Smiles at him, a private smile meant only for him. He smiles back.

The flowers. They tell a story.

_Yes, Jon. I remember._

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: i live in India, so i'm sorry if i butchered northern flora and fauna ("at least she tried"-my life's motto at this point.) also, i hate how long this got, please bear with me (i say this after every fic, because i'm a loser)  
> as you can see, i kept some things from the book, some from the show. like everything post s5 is show-verse while the rest is based on asoiaf, like the colours of house bolton. is this spring-ish enough?  
> if you've read this far, one kudos=one prayer for Hullen's boy, who didn't even last five paragraphs.


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